Eliza Flower at Harlow to Benjamin Flower at the Creaks, 69 Cornhill, London, undated [postmarked Friday, 30 January 1807].

My dear Love

   I hope you got to Town in whole skin with your mettlesome [honeybriar?][1]as I should ere this have received some information respecting you and I trust you will arrive at Harlow in perfect safety to morrow and by day light.  We sent the quarter sheet to day by Bury Coach the whole will go to morrow by Stortford.  Young Nottage[2] has called to day to say that the Hoddesden people do not wish Mr Harrison[3] to go there yet, as their meeting is either rebuilding or undergoing some repair so that you need not go to Henham on Sunday.   I am rather glad of this as I was quite afraid you would have over fatigued yourself.  Mr Hawkes has called this afternoon & wished to have seen you.  I have received a parcel from Cambridge a letter from Mr John Eaden enclosing two letters from the Cambridge office one from Rowland the paper maker and another a tooth powder ad for the Cambridge Intelligencer.[4]

   Sarah is most completely covered with a rash so nearly resembling the measles that Mr Dobson cannot undertake to say whether it is that disorder or a common tooth eruption.  She has the symptomatic cough of the measles, but is much better than we could expect for my own part I am enclined to think it is the measles she has been in my lap the whole of the day but she does not loath her food & is very passive & good she has made me sing to her & talk so much about ‘papa’ nunnun Town&c &c that I am really hoarse she is just gone into a warm bed & fast asleep.  Eliza is very well has been quite entertaining and good she has been singing “no my love no” in great stile I assure you.  I am surprised at the correctness of her ear and at the facility with which she learns a new tune—we made a great mistake this morning in leaving your Bag at home.   I sent it on by Stortford Coach to Mr Creaks.  I half expect to hear from you to morrow—pray don’t make it late before you are home I intreat—remember me kindly to all friends.

                                 Your ever affectionate

                                             E Flower

Harlow Friday eveng—

Text: Timothy Whelan, ed., Politics, Religion, and Romance: The Letters of Benjamin Flower and Eliza Gould, 1794-1808 (Aberystwyth: National Library of Wales, 2008), pp. 327-28 (a far more annotated text than that which appears on this site). 

References above include Thomas Nottage of Henham, Essex, who placed several advertisements in the Intelligencer for a shopman to live with a Dissenter’s family in the grocery and drapery business (CI 24 February 1798, 16 March 1799, 10 May 1799); and Joseph Harrison (1749-1821) of Oldham, who pastored between 1775 and 1789 in Essex and Cambridgeshire.